Ed is a passionate and expert skier. When you sit for meditation and your mind drifts you can just bring it back to your practice and continue. But if you are skiing down a steep mountain and you lose concentration you could hit a tree. Ed teaches this, calling it inner skiing, where our perception [...]
There is no true religion or spirituality without kindness and love. Swami Brahmananda Ed was raised in the Jewish faith (as he says, on his parents side!), Deb was raised a Quaker. We both began spiritually seeking at the same time in the late 1960′s. Ed was in his twenties living in New York City, [...]
However you try to define meditation, it’s not that. Swami Brahmananda Through many years of being involved with meditation we have seen how easily people miss the point, mainly because they take the practice and themselves too seriously. Many ‘try’ to meditate but their minds are so busy they get frustrated and quickly believe they [...]
If a butterfly becomes extinct in Australia, it affects the ecosystem of the whole world, because a third of our food supply depends on insect pollination. Caring for each other and the planet is, therefore, inseparable from caring for ourselves; we are both dependent on and a part of the earth and the woods and [...]
Anger, aggression and bitterness are like thieves in the night who steal our ability to love and care.
We have recently witnessed the result of one man’s madness that was unleashed on a group of innocent people in Tucson, Arizona. This recent horror occurred largely because no one responded when the young killer was previously silently screaming for help. And then we witnessed two prominent voices speak up, one in defense of herself [...]
Last March we wrote a blog, Making Friends With Illness, that quoted our friend Liz who, at the time, had cancer. Last week she died. Our lives had intermingled for over 25 years, we lived next door for some of those, we knew her extended family and she knew ours, we used to spend summer [...]
Life is challenging enough, we can never know what will arise next and only when our minds are clear and focused can we make the best decisions.
Allowing fear in and making friends with it so it becomes an ally
The word stress is a derivation of the Latin word meaning to be drawn tight, which is pretty much how most of us feel. The words meditation and medication have the same prefix derived from the Latin word medicus, meaning to care or to cure, indicating that meditation is likely to be the most effective and efficient remedy for a busy and overworked mind. Which is why meditation is the greatest gift you could give your self.
